So unfortunately Zig wasn't able to sweet talk the conservation authority, he said dealing with them was pretty reasonable though, they were not trying to be dicks about the process and were willing to work with him, but they have their regulations they have to follow, and that's their job, so it is what it is.
That being said there are options.
The flood vents are not one of them, Zig isn't sure how he would implement them and he doesn't think they are a good idea anyway and I agree.
The said he we relocate the building 30ft forward on my property they see no issues at all at that point, but it would mean a redesign of the structure as 30 feet forward means we are right next to my house, so I will have to make the building more Narrow and I can't go further back to make up the difference so the square footage would go down which I'm not happy with.
We could get the hydraulic survey done but ball park price range is $5,000 and that doesn't even guarantee they will rule in our favor, I could spend 5K and still be in the exact same position I'm in now.
The ideal solution is one where we modify the flood plain, and this is the one we are investigating at this point. The conservation authority said their main issue is the amount of fill we have to bring in for the building. There thought process is that in the event of a flood, because of all the extra fill it will take longer for the waters to recede since we will be restricting water flow.
But we can do a 1:1 switch, for every lb of fill we bring in, we can remove a lb of fill from somewhere else on my property. This way the flood plain is unaffected. Zig is working with the company I had my topographical survey done with the figure out how much fill will need to be removed in order to accommodate this.
So some road blocks at this point, but options are available to us, so continuing to move forward, it's why I started the process now anyway so we can deal with these issues and ideally be ready to break ground in the spring.